


altR

by Haywire



Category: Father Ted
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 17:37:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haywire/pseuds/Haywire
Summary: When the Craggy Island parish finds itself dragged into the 20th century and finally has a (singular) cell phone, chaos ensues.





	altR

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodredcherries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodredcherries/gifts).



Father Ted Crilly scratched his head, peering down at the electronic device on the table before him. A thin, white cord ran from one of its ends, which ran into an adapter jammed into the one remaining spot on an already overburdened power strip.

He squinted at the device’s dark screen, more specifically at a little pulsating dot in its upper left corner, which regularly flashed an angry shade of red every few seconds or so.

“What are you doing, Father?” came a voice over his shoulder, startling him.

“Gracious, Mrs. Doyle,” Ted began, “you half scared the life out of me.”

“Sorry, Father.” Mrs. Doyle pulled back slightly, then gestured at the little trolley that she perpetually pulled around with her. “What do you say to a cup o’ tea, Father? Come on, now,” she added, cajoling him before he could even respond to her initial offer.

“Maybe in a bit, I’m trying to figure out how to work this thing.” He lifted the device up and waved it for emphasis.

“What’s that now?” She leaned in and squinted at the object. “Have a cup o’ tea and a biscuit then it’ll come right to you, I’m sure.” Mrs. Doyle started pouring one up while she was speaking. “Is that something new you bought, then?”

“Mmmhmm,” he replied, relenting as she laid the cup on the table and placed a biscuit beside it. “A cell.”

“Oh, you’re selling it?”

“No, no, it’s a _cell_ ,” Ted replied.

“A sell of what?”

“A phone, Mrs. Doyle!”

“Oh my dear, I didn’t hear it ringing, I’ll be right back!” she said, heading for the kitchen before Ted could say anything further. He just shook his head until a loud beep caught his attention. Turning to the phone, he saw that its light was now pulsing green and the screen came to life.

“Ah, brilliant!” Ted unplugged the cell phone and waited for it to continue booting up. He started to lift the cup of tea to his mouth with one hand, holding the phone in his other.

“What’s that there now, then, Ted?” asked Dougal, who entered the living room from the hallway.

“It’s a gift from the diocese, Father Dick Byrne sent it over because he’s got a new one, and I’m waiting for it to warm up,” Ted said all at once, not wanting to brook any more silly questions.

Dougal looked from Ted, to the cup of tea, then back at Ted, scratching his head. “Father Byrne must’ve moved pretty fast to get it to you that hot, Ted. And you don’t need to wait for it to warm up, it looks pretty hot to me already, sure look at the steam there.”

“Not the tea, Dougal!” shouted Ted. “The phone, the flippin’ phone!”

“That’s not a flip phone, Ted. Looks like an iPhone to me, though, er. One o’ dem older models, I reckon.”

“It… well, yes, I suppose,” he replied. “You know the diocese doesn’t exactly have a ton of money -”

“Ah right, because when you had that, er -” Dougal started.

“That money was just resting in my account!” shouted Ted before clearing his throat. “I mean, those two things are completely unrelated.”

Dougal’s eyes grew larger and he looked around the room awkwardly for a few moments before returning his gaze to Ted.

“Anyway, as you know I requested cell phones for us back when we heard they were installing a new cell tower on Craggy Island a few months’ back.”

“Right, the one they put where Tom used to sit and greet people, isn’t it?” said Dougal.

“Oh yes, but the phone company made a deal with him. They told him it’d make it easier for him to say hello to people now,” Ted replied, glancing out the window.

-

Off in the distance, a man clad in jeans and a white ‘I Shot JR’ shirt sits near the top of a tall cellular telephone tower. As a car drives past, he leans down and shouts.

“HELLO DERE!”

-

“Anyway, what was I saying?” Ted said. “Ah, right, the phones. I put in an order for them, since we were going to have an actual functioning cell tower, and that they’d want to give us new phones.”

“Why would we need phones again though?” asked Dougal.

“I don’t know, Dougal, what if someone had an existential emergency and needed to call their priest?”

“You’d be giving out your cell phone number?”

“No, I’d give them yours,” said Ted. “That’s your sort of thing, after all. Me and Father Jack have had far more experience in that field, of course.”

“Oh. Right.” Dougal frowned, then shook his head and clapped his hands together. “So where’s mine, then?” He looked around the table for another box.

“They only gave us the one,” replied Ted. On cue, the phone beeped once more as it finished booting up. “And it’s my responsibility to set it up now, so I’ll get right on that.”

“Aww, that’s not fair,” Dougal whined. “What about Father Jack and I, when do we get to use it?”

“As you can see, I’ve actually done up a schedule.” Ted bent down behind the table and pulled up a calendar - a complimentary 2018 Golden Clerics Nominees™ calendar sent; Ted was underwhelmed when he saw he’d been left out - and pointed out his handwritten schedule.

“It says here that Jack and I get the phone every other weekend for …” Dougal’s finger skimmed over the handwritten schedule. “Only an hour each?”

“Er, it’s a work in progress,” answered Ted, waving him away with one hand. “Now be quiet, I’m trying to install this appy thingy here… there we go, it’s downloading now.”

Dougal peered over Ted’s shoulder. “altR? What’s that, Ted?”

“It’s an app for priests to meet up with one another, of course.” Ted turned the phone toward him and showed the other priest the app’s icon. It appeared to be a man entering a dark corner, with only the whites of his eyes peeking out. “See, the little man entered the confessional there. Neat, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Dougal agreed hesitantly, then he snapped his fingers. “Oh Ted! Can I install Pokémon on it? Please please please, can I?”

“I don’t see why not, though this is an, er, older model phone.” Ted inspected the back of it. “Looks like an iPhone 3 I think?”

“I don’t care I just have to catch them all! And I’m very behind, Ted, it’s been out for ages. For all I know all the pokémon on Craggy Island have been caught already,” he added with a pout.

“Yes, yes, alright. Let me just finish setting this up… I have to pick an icon, it seems.” Ted scrolled through the app, typing in info slowly with both of his thumbs. “And a username.”

“That one there, that’s the one.” Dougal reached for the screen but had to settle for pointing instead once Ted pulled it out of reach. “The teddy bear one, because you’re Ted.”

“Well, I won’t lie, I did used to be called a big ol’ teddy bear back in my younger days,” recounted Ted with a grin. “D’you know why, Dougal?”

“Because you’re so hairy?” he ventured.

“What? No, it was because I was cuddly and the ladies loved me!” Ted said.

“Ahh, come on now, Ted, are you sure?”

“Anyway, the phone is mine for the rest of the day, so bug- er, so go and do something else, Dougal.” Ted waved him off and turned his attention back to the phone, entering his username - TeddyBear - while Dougal moped off somewhere.

-

The rest of the week unfolded in a similar fashion. Ted was forced to relinquish possession of the phone every other day, keeping it himself for ‘ecclesiastical purposes’ every second day. Dougal and Jack were happy enough to have a full day with it, and would often take it away from Ted while he was in church or otherwise occupied.

Jack especially would sneak into Dougal and Ted’s bedroom each night, taking the phone and playing online poker without their knowledge. Sometimes he’d forget to plug it back in to charge (and other times he did it on purpose to annoy Ted) when he placed it back on Ted’s nightstand.

Dougal, meanwhile, played nothing but Pokémon the whole time he had the phone, to the point where he had to recharge it in the middle of his days with it.

He’d even taken to moving about the church while giving his sermons, keeping the phone in the sleeves of his robes and actively catching pokémon when they popped up; he’d ask the congregation to close their eyes in prayer until he’d either caught his target or it ran away.

On top of that, Dougal would record messages and videos about the game, sharing them on YouTube and other sites, where he talked about catching them all and how he was going to get every last one of them. To say he dove into the fandom head first would’ve been a grand understatement.

And as for Ted, aside from the odd mini game of solitaire or backgammon, he mainly used his new altR app to speak with several new people. He was a little taken aback by their poor grammar and their insistence on wanting to meet up in person, but Ted just figured he was new to the internet and that he’d get used to it eventually.

-

It all came to an end one fateful day. While the phone was charging on the living room table - Dougal had worn it down to 0% earlier, being his day for catching pokémon - and the whole house sat around watching the evening news on television.

“Tonight’s top story: police are cracking down on an illegal pornographic community online,” said the news reporter.

“What’s this now, I wonder?” asked Ted. “Always something shady going on with those internet things, isn’t there?”

“Users of a popular phone app have been knowingly conversing with one another and even meeting up in public, creating quite the stir,” continued the reporter.

“Disgusting, really, that anyone would want to carry on like that,” Ted agreed.

“Oh yes, Ted, it’s horrible,” said Dougal, eyeing the phone across the room and waiting for its light to blink green so he could use it again.

“Shite,” chimed in Jack, rocking back and forth and swallowing a mouthful from his bottle.

“Here’s a screenshot of such a conversation,” added the reporter as an infographic popped up on the screen. “As you can see here, the two anonymous users, and altRBoy and TeddyBear, are having a coded discussion…”

“What?!” yelled Ted.

“Say, Ted, isn’t that you right there?” Dougal pointed to his username and icon on the screen. “The one talking to the boy or whatnot.”

“That isn’t a boy, it’s another altR user, and we were discussion our love of the church!” he exclaimed.

“They’re saying it’s code for… something,” said Dougal, squinting at the words scrolling across the screen.

“altR, which of course is shorthand for ‘alternate’, was created to allow people of all types of sexual orientation, walks of life, and backgrounds to communicate, regardless of whether people agree with their choices, and -”

“I’ve got to go!” Ted screamed, jumping to his feet and racing for the door before he could hear any more. “It’s all been a terrible mistake, I need to tell them!” He snagged the phone off of the table on the way, thinking to show them the proof of how innocent it all was.

“Tell who, Ted?” Dougal yelled after him as the older priest grabbed the car keys hanging by the door and bolted outside.

Father Jack just laughed and took another swig.

Ted fumbled with the phone, powering it up as he jumped into the driver’s seat and started the car. He looked down at it as he drove, heading towards the police station. They’d understand once he showed them everything.

“Where is that blasted conversation…” He tried to scroll through the apps on the home screen as he drove, swerving dangerously back and forth on the road in his rush to exonerate himself.

In his hurry, he mistakenly hit the media player button, and the phone - which he’d synced to play over his car speakers via Bluetooth - started playing the audio on some of Dougal’s videos.

“We’re gonna catch them all!” boomed the loud voice, startling Ted.

“Ahh! They’re after me!” He peered out of his windshield and looked around for the source of the voice. “I can explain, I swear I can!”

“Gotta catch ‘em all! I’m gonna get you!” the voice continued. Leaning forward, Ted glanced up into the sky, where he figured there might be helicopters hovering and swarming upon his location. He rolled down his driver’s side window to get a better look at the skies above him.

In all of the confusion, he wasn’t paying attention to where he was headed, and, as he approached the cell tower, one more voice added to the cacophony of noise: Tom, high atop the tower in his perch, recognized the oncoming pries.

“HELLO FADDER!” he bellowed from high above.

“Ahhh!” The voice from the heavens pushed Ted over the edge, and he lost control of the vehicle. The car swung to one side and then the other before smashing into the side of the cell tower. It collapsed almost immediately, squealing and groaning as it crumpled into a heap of twisted metal.

Thankfully for both Ted and Tom, the car skidded to a stop into a nearby pile of hay, and Tom landed on top of the same stack. Both of them turned and looked at each other.

“Hello, Tom,” said Ted.

-

When it was all said and done, they lost their phone. Not only the Craggy Island parish, but the entire island lost cell service, as Ted had destroyed its sole cell phone tower. Their only saving grace: Jack’s online poker account had amassed more than enough money to pay for the damages. Jack was not happy about that, especially because the church decided to keep the surplus in lieu of any further punishment.

They referred to it as an alternative resolution.

Ted couldn’t argue with that.


End file.
